Healthy Dog for Life

The American Veterinary Medical Association passed a resolution in early August of 2012 to discourage the feeding of raw diets for dogs. Apart from causing uproar among proponents of natural pet nutritional practices the underlying suggestion is that the AVMA is showing signs of desperation at the growing numbers of dog owners, realizing that commercial pet foods are unsafe are trending towards a more suitable healthier natural based alternative. I will discuss what happened and what this means for you. [Read more →]

Raw feeding dogs has come a long way these last few years as people are really starting to understand the huge health benefits of this natural dog food diet. Much of the change is due to the sheer lack of understanding by the veterinary profession which rather than try to recognize and accept raw feeding for dogs are doing their best to block progress.

Why? [Read more →]

Feeding your dog a raw food diet dogs love that is different from the normal practice of bagged and canned food may be a challenge to accept if you believe the naysayers. The idea in principal sounds great but what about the actual practice?

With this in mind, here are nine strong reasons to feed a raw food diet for dogs. Will they help you to accept that sometimes the alternative to the accepted norm is better, healthier, safer, cleaner and all round the natural choice for your dogs long term health, vitality, longevity and better yet your pocket? [Read more →]

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

The whole raw food diet for dogs alternative feeding option has slowly been gaining traction these last few years and now many specialist raw dog food companies are opening up on the Internet to fulfill that need. It would seem that these are exciting times for dog owners fed up with their dog health complaints, veterinary costs and the questionable quality of commercial dog food in cans and packets… even the supposedly best quality most expensive choices. Have we turned a corner and is the natural dog food revolution about to begin? [Read more →]

Image by chefranden via Flickr

The other day when I mentioned feeding raw meat to a lady who’s dog had just been diagnosed with diabetes, she nearly fell off the chair in horror! “You can’t feed raw meat to a dog…. it’s dangerous!” When I asked why, she was not quite as sure of what to say for a moment and then as the answer formed in her mind she began to tell me things she had heard from someone else. I got the “because it’s got dangerous bacteria in it and if there’s bones, they’ll get stuck and I don’t want my dog to die” after that she stopped as if her brain had shut down from a preset auto answer before shutoff. [Read more →]

Image by jimbomack66 via Flickr

Feeding a raw diet to dogs can work out much cheaper than premium commercial dog food when you know what to do and where to find it. Overall the benefits of a raw food diet for dogs far out way the cons as veterinary costs over the lifetime of your dog can be as low as 10 to 15% of the costs of canned or kibble fed dogs when long term health benefits are taken into consideration.

A dog that is fed a balanced raw food dog diet will simply need less veterinarian attention according to a study of 126 dogs fed a raw food diet in Australia over 12 months. The dog owners in the study reported that overall savings were in the region of 85% based mainly on the fact that they simply needed far less veterinary attention. [Read more →]

Pet Foods – Which Option Is Best?

Pet food is little understood by many. We grow up watching cute dog commercials on the TV and casually take in pet food advertising plastered about the human landscape. And we naturally assume that the little pieces of oily salty crunchy kibble bits in boxes and bags, or the smelly stinky mushy stuff covered in jelly that we do our best not to get on our hands as we scoop it out of cans is what dogs and cats eat.

Then one day we hear some noise made by raw food zealots who believe that a dog should eat a raw food diet for dogs consisting of bits of dead animals, which is what we buy at the butchers and cook for dinner but somehow it seems not right to feed a dog raw. [Read more →]

It is no surprise that we as human beings feed our dogs on commercial canned and kibble dog food. In an age of commercial domination via all media outlets, we as consumers have been lied to so often and with such veracity over many generations that we no longer understand or even comprehend that our pet dogs are predecessors of wolves. And as such our dogs nutritional needs for a raw food diet have been swept under a carpet of convenient modern thoughtlessness. [Read more →]

Ok, so assuming you are feeding your dog a raw food diet but your not sure how much your canine companion needs to eat each day, the first question you need to answer is, how much energy does your dog have? [Read more →]

Image by abbilder via Flickr

I personally fed my Yellow Lab a raw food diet when I was just 3 years old back in the 60′s. We lived on an outback Australian farm so this was perhaps a natural choice seeing as we had plenty of raw food on tap with the provisions for a family of 6 including plenty of beef, lamb, pork, chicken and game, all living on our farm.

So I have had many decades to witness the extraordinary benefits of a raw diet for dogs. Perhaps if your at that moment of decision whether to feed your dog a raw food diet or not, so I’ll tell you the one clear benefit that trumps all others: [Read more →]